Preparing Your Business Plan

No matter how many times you have written your business plan, there are certain steps you can follow in order to make the process easier.

Identify your objectives. The first step in preparing your business plan is to determine who your audience is going to be and what they want to know about your company. Then, you must determine what you want your audience to know. What are the areas you want to emphasize? What are the ones you want to downplay or eliminate? Once you have resolved any conflicts between these two viewpoints, you are ready to move to Step 2.

Outline your business plan. Now that you have identified your objectives, you can begin preparing an outline of your business plan based on these special requirements. An outline can be as general or as specific as you would like. However, the more specific it is, the easier the writing process will be.

Review your outline. The next step is to review your outline. Based on your readers and your objectives, identify the areas that should be presented in detail or summary form in your business plan. Remember that your business plan should maintain a fairly high-level focus. Any detail information can be included in the appendix section of your business plan or on a request basis.

Write your plan. Depending on the age of your business and your experience writing business plans, the order in which you develop the specific elements of your business plan will vary. A good order to follow though is to;

• Gather information. Most people will begin by gathering historical financial information and market research information first. You will use this information to make many of the basic assumptions and strategies that you will include in your plan.
• Prepare drafts. The next step in writing your business plan is to prepare initial drafts of your prospective financial statements. Your financial statements will help you determine which strategies are "doable" from a financial perspective before you spend time and energy writing detailed descriptions of each area.
• Write summary. The last step in writing your business plan is to prepare an Executive Summary. Even though this document comes at the beginning of your business plan, it is written last because it includes a summarization of all of the other sections.

Have your plan reviewed. No matter how many times you read your own work, it is easy for you to have overlooked things so its best to get someone who is familiar with the planning process and business management review your business plan.

It is a good idea to update your business plan on a regular basis.